For an older person living with several chronic conditions, reduced mobility and growing dependence on family support, digital technology can remove practical barriers that once required repeated journeys between services. Health information can be accessed electronically, some clinical follow-up can take place remotely, appointments can be managed digitally and professionals can increasingly use information generated outside a traditional consultation.
Türkiye enters this period of change with significant digital-health infrastructure already in place. Yet the implications for long-term care are more complicated than the digitalisation of health care alone. Across the Türkiye Aging, Long-Term Care & Community Support Knowledge Hub, the recurring challenge is that long-term support extends across health services, social services, municipalities, residential provision, home-based support and families. A digitally sophisticated health system does not automatically create a digitally connected long-term-care system.
The country's Twelfth Development Plan sets a clear direction for wider use of digital health technologies, hospital digitalisation, telehealth, interoperability, digital-health literacy and better data for evidence-informed policy. During 2026, Ministry of Health services have also continued to expand remote patient assessment through the national digital-health environment. These developments create important possibilities for an ageing population, particularly where mobility, distance or chronic disease make repeated physical attendance difficult.
The central policy challenge is therefore no longer whether technology has a place in care. It is how Türkiye can connect digital capability with functional ability, social support, human relationships and accountable long-term-care pathways without creating a new divide between people who can use digital services easily and those who cannot.
Türkiye already has a substantial digital-health foundation
Digital transformation in long-term care does not begin from zero. Türkiye's health system has developed national digital services that provide a significant foundation for future integration.
e-Nabız, the Ministry of Health's personal health record system, enables citizens to access health information collected from health organisations and, within defined permissions, to allow health professionals to review relevant records. Ministry information published in 2026 described the platform as having around 70 million active users, integration with 39 central systems and communication with more than 30,000 health facilities.
The scale matters because digital transformation becomes more difficult when basic identity, health information and electronic access are fragmented across hundreds of independent systems. Türkiye has already created national infrastructure capable of supporting large-scale digital health interactions.
MHRS, the Central Physician Appointment System, adds another established digital access route. Remote health services can now connect appointments made through MHRS with online consultations and the wider e-Nabız environment. Ministry facilities describe the Uzaktan Hasta Değerlendirme, or Remote Patient Assessment, service as enabling appropriate patients to speak with physicians through computers, tablets or mobile devices without travelling to a hospital.
None of this should be confused with a comprehensive digital long-term-care platform. The distinction matters. e-Nabız is principally health infrastructure. Long-term care includes functional assistance, social support, home environments, caregiver capacity, community participation and daily living needs that do not fit neatly within a medical record.
The opportunity is to build on Türkiye's digital-health maturity while avoiding the assumption that every long-term-care problem is fundamentally a health-data problem.
Digital transformation should begin with the care pathway
Technology is most valuable when it solves a defined operational problem.
An older person may struggle to attend a routine hospital appointment because leaving home requires a relative to take time away from work. A home-health professional may lack information about a recent hospital intervention. A social worker may know that somebody's family support has collapsed while health professionals continue to assume that care at home remains stable. A residential service may need a faster route to clinical advice when a resident's condition changes.
Each situation creates a different digital requirement.
One may require remote consultation. Another requires information exchange. Another needs an alert or referral workflow. Another requires access to specialist expertise.
This is why technology-enabled care should not be defined by the devices being purchased. The stronger test is whether technology improves access, continuity, safety, independence or professional decision-making.
Digital transformation can fail operationally even when the technology itself functions perfectly. A referral platform that sends information successfully but has no receiving professional accountable for acting on it simply digitises an unresolved referral. A remote monitoring device that generates alerts without a defined response pathway may increase workload without improving safety. An online service that an older person cannot access may make theoretical availability greater while practical access becomes worse.
Türkiye's long-term-care transformation therefore needs service design and digital design to develop together.
Remote health services can reduce distance without replacing physical care
Remote health is one of the clearest current examples of Türkiye's digital transition.
The regulatory framework for remote health services was established in 2022, and Ministry facilities in 2026 describe remote assessment being used for appropriate online consultation, review of existing test results, chronic-disease monitoring, treatment and medication review, electronic prescriptions and reports, and clinical advice. Some Ministry information also describes the potential use of patient measurements and wearable-device data.
This has obvious relevance to older people and people with disabilities. Travel can itself be a care burden. Someone with severe arthritis, frailty or mobility impairment may need another person to accompany them. Rural distance can make routine review disproportionately difficult. A person recovering at home may benefit from an earlier follow-up than would otherwise be practical.
Yet Ministry guidance is also clear that remote health is not an automatic equivalent to face-to-face care and is not a substitute for emergency assessment.
That boundary is particularly important in long-term care. Functional decline may be visible in how somebody walks across a room, manages medication, prepares food or interacts with the home environment. Pressure damage, dehydration, delirium or caregiver exhaustion may not be fully apparent through a scheduled video consultation.
The strongest model is therefore hybrid rather than digital-only.
Remote care can remove unnecessary travel, extend professional reach and provide timely follow-up. Home visits, primary care, hospital assessment and direct support remain necessary when physical examination, environmental observation, hands-on assistance or human presence are central to the person's need.
Operational scenario: remote follow-up supports independence without becoming the whole service
A 78-year-old man living outside Konya has heart failure, diabetes and reduced mobility following a fall. His daughter normally drives him to hospital appointments, requiring a substantial round trip and time away from work.
For a stable follow-up in which the physician needs to review recent results, discuss symptoms and assess medication adherence, remote assessment may remove an unnecessary journey. His health information can support the consultation, while home measurements such as blood pressure or blood glucose may contribute where clinically appropriate.
The digital pathway becomes unsafe, however, if convenience encourages professionals to overlook changing function. During the consultation his daughter reports that he has become less steady and is struggling to reach the bathroom at night. That information changes the problem. The issue is no longer only chronic-disease monitoring.
A strong pathway uses the remote consultation to identify the need for further assessment rather than attempting to resolve everything digitally. Appropriate local health or rehabilitation input can examine his mobility and falls risk, while social or community support may become relevant if daily activities are deteriorating.
The benefit is not that technology replaces visits. It prevents unnecessary visits while helping necessary interventions occur sooner. That distinction should remain central as Türkiye expands remote health for an ageing population.
Long-term care needs information beyond the medical record
Türkiye's digital-health infrastructure demonstrates what national-scale information systems can achieve. Long-term care nevertheless requires a broader information model.
Knowing somebody's diagnoses, prescriptions and laboratory results does not reveal whether they can prepare food, climb stairs, remember to take medication, communicate effectively, manage personal care or remain safely alone overnight.
Nor does it establish whether a spouse providing daily assistance is approaching exhaustion.
A digitally connected long-term-care pathway therefore needs to recognise several types of information:
- clinical information relevant to continuing health care;
- functional information about mobility, cognition and activities of daily living;
- social information about living arrangements, support networks and significant risks;
- current services and which organisation is responsible for them;
- important changes that require reassessment or escalation; and
- the person's preferences, communication requirements and agreed involvement of family members.
Not every professional requires unrestricted access to all of this information. The purpose is not to create one enormous record available to everyone.
Instead, Türkiye can develop stronger health and social-care interoperability around the information necessary for a defined care function.
A home-support service may need to know about mobility precautions without seeing an individual's complete medical history. A physician may need to know that a person lives alone and that a family caregiver has withdrawn, even though most details of the person's social-service record are irrelevant to clinical treatment.
Digital integration therefore requires information governance, not simply technical connectivity.
Privacy and consent become more important as information becomes more useful
Long-term-care information can be intensely personal. Health conditions, cognition, financial circumstances, family relationships, disability, daily routines and the interior of someone's home may all become relevant to support.
Türkiye's Law No. 6698 on the Protection of Personal Data provides the wider legal context for personal-data processing. The Ministry of Health's current e-Nabız privacy information identifies the Ministry as data controller for personal information processed within that system, while remote-health arrangements include requirements relating to information, records and privacy.
For long-term care, lawful processing needs to be translated into understandable operational practice.
An older person should not have to choose between receiving coordinated care and surrendering control over all personal information. Nor should professionals become so uncertain about information sharing that necessary communication stops.
Good privacy-by-design asks which information is required, who needs it, for what purpose, for how long and with what safeguards.
This becomes especially important as monitoring moves into people's homes. A clinical record is one thing. Continuous movement monitoring, location information, cameras, voice assistants or behavioural analytics can reveal much more about daily life.
Consent should therefore be meaningful rather than buried within technology adoption. People need to understand what a system observes, what happens to the information, who can see it and what happens if they choose not to use the technology.
Organizations considering comparable transformation can use the Digital Transformation, AI and Cybersecurity Readiness Assessment to structure questions about infrastructure, information governance, workforce readiness and digital risk. It does not assess compliance with Turkish law, but it can help leaders examine whether technology governance is keeping pace with adoption.
Digital inclusion is a care-quality issue
The existence of an online service is not the same as equal access to it.
Older people vary enormously in digital confidence, literacy, sensory ability, cognition, income, device ownership and internet connectivity. Some use smartphones and online public services independently. Others depend on relatives. Some may have no reliable connection or may struggle with authentication, passwords or small-screen interfaces.
Long-term-care populations are also more likely than the general population to include people whose impairments make conventional digital interfaces difficult.
A digital-first system can therefore create a paradox. The people who might benefit most from remote access may also face the greatest barriers to using it.
This makes digital exclusion and access a quality and equity concern rather than merely a technology-training problem.
Alternative routes should remain available where needed. Telephone, face-to-face contact and supported digital access are not signs of failed digital transformation. They are components of inclusive transformation.
Family assistance can help, but it should not become a hidden requirement. A person living alone should not receive a weaker service simply because there is no son or daughter available to manage an app. Similarly, relatives helping with digital access should not automatically gain unrestricted visibility of sensitive health information.
The strongest systems use technology to expand routes into care rather than close the routes that existed before.
Operational scenario: digital access exposes rather than solves inequality
An 84-year-old woman in a small district lives alone and has hearing impairment, hypertension and early cognitive decline. Her son works in İstanbul and helps manage appointments when he can.
A remote consultation appears ideal because travel to hospital is difficult. In practice, she struggles to navigate the digital appointment process and cannot reliably hear through her phone speaker. Her son begins logging in on her behalf and explaining clinical information.
The arrangement works until he is unavailable.
An inclusive service would recognise that the problem is not simply whether the woman possesses a phone. Her sensory, cognitive and support circumstances determine whether the digital pathway is usable. Depending on local arrangements, support might involve a more accessible interface, telephone assistance, help from an appropriate local service or a face-to-face route where remote consultation is unsuitable.
The digital system should also distinguish legitimate supported access from uncontrolled sharing of credentials. Her son's involvement needs to respect her preferences and privacy rather than emerging informally because the interface is difficult.
At governance level, repeated patterns matter. If remote appointments are disproportionately abandoned by older people with sensory or cognitive impairment, the response should not be to classify them simply as non-users. Completion rates, assisted access and conversion to face-to-face care can reveal whether digital expansion is improving access or redistributing barriers.
Technology in the home can support independence, but monitoring changes the care relationship
Long-term-care technology extends well beyond video consultations.
Medication reminders, fall-detection systems, environmental sensors, emergency alarms, wearable devices and remote physiological monitoring can all contribute to safer support at home. Future development may increasingly combine several data sources to identify change earlier.
For Türkiye, this could be particularly valuable as policy seeks to strengthen home and community support. Technology can make it easier for somebody to remain at home when the alternative is not greater independence but repeated emergency contact or premature institutional care.
However, a sensor does not provide care simply because it detects a problem.
Every monitoring technology needs an operational response: who receives the alert, how quickly it is reviewed, what threshold triggers action, what happens outside normal hours and how false alarms are managed.
Without those arrangements, remote monitoring can produce an illusion of safety.
The ethical dimension matters as well. Continuous observation can conflict with privacy and autonomy. Someone may reasonably prefer a degree of risk to living under intrusive surveillance. Technology should therefore support rights, consent and decision-making rather than automatically prioritising risk avoidance.
Where cognition is impaired, these questions become more complex, not less. Decisions should consider the person's rights, wishes, decision-making ability, proportionality of the technology and whether less intrusive alternatives can achieve the same purpose.
Artificial intelligence should support judgement rather than obscure responsibility
Artificial intelligence will increasingly influence health and care systems, but its long-term-care role in Türkiye should be described carefully. AI-enabled technologies already exist within parts of health care, and current national policy discussions include artificial intelligence alongside wearable technology, telehealth and mobile health. That does not mean AI is already an established nationwide long-term-care operating model.
The more credible near-term opportunities lie in decision support and workload reduction.
Algorithms may help identify patterns in large datasets, flag people whose risk appears to be changing, support scheduling, summarise information or identify populations that may require proactive intervention. Generative tools may eventually reduce documentation burden or make information easier for professionals and citizens to navigate.
Each application creates a governance requirement.
If an algorithm identifies an older person as high risk, professionals need to understand what action follows. If it fails to identify somebody whose condition deteriorates, responsibility cannot disappear into the technology. If historical data reflect unequal access to services, automated models may reproduce those inequalities.
Human oversight is particularly important where decisions affect eligibility, intensity of support, safeguarding or major changes in living arrangements.
AI should therefore augment professional judgement rather than create unchallengeable decisions. The person affected should remain visible within the process, and organizations need clear accountability for how automated outputs influence action.
This is also where AI and automation in care intersects with workforce design. Technology may remove repetitive tasks, but it also creates new work: reviewing alerts, checking data quality, explaining digital decisions, managing exceptions and maintaining safe systems.
The workforce determines whether digital transformation becomes care transformation
Digital capability cannot sit only within information-technology departments.
Health professionals, social workers, care staff, managers and community teams need enough digital competence to use systems safely and to recognise when technology is inappropriate.
The skills required extend beyond knowing which button to press.
Professionals may need to conduct effective remote assessments, interpret remotely generated information, protect confidentiality outside traditional settings, identify digital exclusion, explain monitoring technology, recognise unreliable data and escalate concerns when a digital pathway is not working.
Managers need different capabilities. They need to understand workflow redesign, information governance, cybersecurity, implementation risk and whether new technology is actually improving outcomes.
This makes digital transformation a workforce-development programme as much as a procurement programme.
It can also affect professional roles. A nurse monitoring remote information may spend less time on routine travel but more time triaging alerts. A social worker may gain quicker visibility of changing circumstances but need to manage more digital referrals. Home-support staff may become important contributors of structured information because they observe functional change that remote clinical systems cannot see.
Türkiye's future workforce innovation and role redesign should therefore examine where technology removes burden and where it simply moves burden from one part of the pathway to another.
The Predictive Workforce Risk Module can help organisations exploring similar change structure analysis of workforce capacity, continuity and emerging staffing risks. It is not a Turkish workforce-planning instrument, but it illustrates the importance of testing whether a new digital operating model is sustainable for the people expected to deliver it.
Operational scenario: remote monitoring creates a new workload that nobody planned
A service supporting older people with complex chronic conditions introduces remote monitoring for a group at increased risk of deterioration. Participants submit physiological measurements from home, and the technology generates alerts when readings move outside defined thresholds.
Initially the programme appears to reduce unnecessary travel. Within several weeks, however, staff are receiving far more alerts than expected. Some are clinically significant; others result from incorrect device use, temporary variation or missing data.
Nurses begin checking alerts between existing duties. Response times become inconsistent. Family members assume somebody is watching continuously even though the service operates only during defined hours.
The technology has not failed. The operating model has.
A stronger approach defines the monitoring population carefully, sets clinically appropriate thresholds, establishes who reviews alerts, communicates operating hours clearly and provides escalation routes for urgent concerns. Staff capacity is modelled before expansion, and false-positive rates are reviewed as a quality measure.
People using the service also need to understand that monitoring does not replace emergency action when they become acutely unwell.
If demand continues to rise, the service can redesign thresholds, staffing or eligibility based on evidence. Digital transformation then becomes a learning system rather than a device rollout.
Residential care needs digital development that preserves the meaning of home
Digital transformation also has implications for Türkiye's nursing homes and older-person care and rehabilitation centres.
Electronic records can strengthen continuity, medication information, care planning and communication with health services. Digital tools may support workforce scheduling, incident analysis, quality monitoring and contact with relatives. Remote specialist input can potentially reduce unnecessary journeys for residents where physical attendance is not required.
Technology can also support residents directly through communication tools, accessible entertainment, cognitive support and contact with family networks.
Yet residential care creates particular ethical questions because technology is introduced into the place where somebody lives.
Surveillance technologies that might appear proportionate in a hospital for a short episode can feel very different when installed permanently in a person's bedroom or living environment. Convenience for the organisation should not automatically override privacy for the resident.
Similarly, digital communication should expand rather than replace human relationships. Video contact with family can be valuable when relatives live far away, but it should not become justification for reducing meaningful social contact within the facility.
Digital quality in residential care therefore needs to consider dignity and quality of life alongside efficiency and safety. That aligns technology with the wider quality, safety and safeguarding of older people rather than treating it as a separate modernisation programme.
Better data could make long-term-care needs visible nationally
One of Türkiye's most important digital opportunities is less visible than telehealth or artificial intelligence: improving the information available for planning long-term care.
WHO's assessment of Türkiye highlighted limited data for evaluating long-term-care performance. This matters because demographic ageing does not translate into identical service need everywhere. Population age, disability, functional limitation, living arrangements, caregiver availability, service supply and rurality all influence demand.
Health datasets alone cannot provide the complete picture.
A stronger intelligence system could combine appropriately governed information about population need, service availability, workforce capacity, access, outcomes and unmet demand. The objective would not be to construct a detailed surveillance record for every citizen. It would be to give national and local decision-makers enough information to understand where support is insufficient or poorly matched to need.
For example, high hospital use among older people in one area may initially appear to be a hospital-capacity problem. When examined alongside limited home support, caregiver strain and poor access to rehabilitation, the policy response may look different.
This connects digital transformation with data-led equity planning. Data should help identify populations that are being missed, not merely describe people already receiving services.
National standards for core data can support comparison, while local analysis can retain enough detail to reflect regional circumstances. The strongest information system therefore connects strategic planning with operational reality.
Operational scenario: a provincial dashboard changes the question being asked
Provincial leaders reviewing older people's services observe increasing emergency hospital use among people aged over 75. Looking only at hospital data, the obvious response might be to focus on emergency-department demand.
A broader dataset shows a more complicated pattern. Several districts with high emergency use also have relatively weak community-service coverage, long travel distances and a high proportion of older people living without nearby adult children. Home-health activity is present, but social-support capacity varies considerably.
The data do not prove that community-service gaps caused every hospital attendance. They do, however, change the planning question.
Instead of asking only how hospitals can manage demand, leaders can investigate whether some people are reaching hospital because earlier functional, social or caregiver problems were not addressed.
A targeted response might then test stronger home support, rehabilitation, remote clinical follow-up or better referral between health and social services in the affected districts. Outcomes can be monitored before wider expansion.
The Quality Dashboard Builder can help organisations examining similar questions structure operational, quality and outcome measures. It does not reproduce Türkiye's national data infrastructure, but the principle is relevant: dashboards become useful when they connect activity with the decisions leaders need to make.
Cybersecurity is continuity-of-care governance
As long-term care becomes more digital, cyber risk becomes a service-delivery issue.
A cyber incident affecting appointment systems, electronic records, remote monitoring or communication platforms can disrupt more than administration. Professionals may lose access to medication information, people may be unable to attend remote consultations and services may lose visibility of planned support.
Older and disabled people may also be particularly exposed to fraud and impersonation when care increasingly involves digital communication.
Cybersecurity therefore needs to sit within business continuity and care governance rather than being treated solely as a technical responsibility.
Services should know how essential care continues if systems become unavailable. Staff need clear offline procedures, critical information needs appropriate backup arrangements and people using digital services need understandable advice about legitimate communications.
The larger the connected ecosystem becomes, the more third-party suppliers also matter. A technology provider may process or transmit highly sensitive information even though it does not deliver care directly. Procurement and governance should therefore consider data protection, system resilience, access controls, incident response and what happens when a contract or technology ends.
Digital dependence can improve continuity when systems work well. Resilience requires planning for the occasions when they do not.
Funding should evaluate the whole operating model, not only the technology
Digital technology is sometimes presented as inherently cost-saving. Long-term care requires a more disciplined analysis.
A remote consultation may reduce travel and release clinical capacity. Monitoring may identify deterioration earlier. Better information exchange may reduce duplicate assessment. Digital scheduling may improve workforce utilisation.
But implementation also has costs: equipment, connectivity, integration, licences, maintenance, cybersecurity, training, technical support, workflow redesign and staff time spent reviewing new information.
Türkiye's Twelfth Development Plan recognises this wider policy issue by linking digital-health expansion with interoperability and envisaging legal and administrative arrangements relating to digital technologies, reimbursement of digital health services and personnel remuneration.
For long-term care, the same principle should apply beyond health care. Funding decisions should ask whether the complete service model is sustainable.
A device supplied without technical support may be abandoned. Remote monitoring without funded response capacity creates risk. An app requiring extensive staff data entry can reduce productivity rather than improve it.
The strongest business case therefore examines cost alongside access, workforce time, avoided travel, service utilisation, outcomes and equity. It should also include the cost of maintaining non-digital routes for people who need them.
Digital transformation becomes sustainable when funding supports the operating model around the technology rather than the purchase alone.
Governance needs to distinguish innovation from evidence
Türkiye's digital-health capability creates space for experimentation. Long-term care should benefit from that innovation without assuming that every promising technology is ready for large-scale adoption.
A pilot can demonstrate technical feasibility without demonstrating improved quality of life. High user engagement during a short project may not show whether technology remains acceptable over several years. A predictive model may perform well in one population but less well when deployed elsewhere.
Governance therefore needs staged adoption.
Before scaling a technology, decision-makers should be able to answer a small number of important questions:
- Which care problem is the technology intended to solve?
- Which population benefits, and who may be excluded?
- What evidence shows improvement in outcomes, access, safety or productivity?
- What new workload, privacy or cybersecurity risks are created?
- What happens when the technology generates an alert or identifies deterioration?
- Can the service continue safely when the system is unavailable?
- What evidence would justify expansion, redesign or withdrawal?
This approach turns innovation into a controlled learning process. It also protects organisations from becoming locked into technology because investment has already been made.
The principle is consistent with pilot evaluation and learning loops: adoption should produce evidence that informs the next decision.
The future is likely to be digitally supported rather than digitally delivered
Türkiye's ageing population will increase pressure to deliver more support across homes and communities while maintaining access to specialist expertise. Technology can contribute significantly to that task.
Remote consultations can reduce unnecessary travel. Monitoring can support earlier intervention. Better information exchange can improve continuity. AI may assist professionals to identify risk or reduce administrative burden. Population intelligence can strengthen planning.
None of these developments removes the need for people.
Long-term care is fundamentally relational because it supports individuals whose needs often involve vulnerability, dependence, identity and everyday life. Helping somebody wash, supporting a person with dementia through distress, understanding family conflict or recognising subtle functional deterioration cannot simply be converted into a digital transaction.
The stronger future model is therefore digitally supported human care.
Technology should give professionals better information, reduce avoidable administration, connect expertise across distance and make support easier to reach. Human workers should retain responsibility for judgement, relationships, explanation, reassurance and the forms of practical assistance that technology cannot provide.
For Türkiye, that balance may be particularly important because the digital-health system is developing alongside a long-term-care system that still relies heavily on families and contains significant organisational fragmentation. Technology can help bridge those structures, but it cannot substitute for developing the services themselves.
International learning should focus on digital architecture and inclusion
Countries differ substantially in their digital identity systems, health records, privacy legislation, local government structures and long-term-care financing. Türkiye's national digital-health infrastructure cannot therefore be transplanted directly into another system.
Its development nevertheless highlights several internationally relevant principles.
National digital infrastructure can create a foundation upon which more specialised services develop. Remote access is most useful when integrated with existing care pathways. Interoperability requires governance as well as technical standards. Digital literacy needs to be considered alongside system design. And large-scale digital capability becomes more valuable when it supports continuity across organisational boundaries rather than creating another separate channel of care.
The reverse lesson is equally important. A country can possess advanced health technology while long-term-care coordination remains fragmented. Digital maturity in one sector should not be mistaken for whole-system integration.
Other systems can therefore adapt the underlying principle without replicating Türkiye's institutions: build reusable digital foundations, but evaluate success through the experience and outcomes of people who need care.
Conclusion
Türkiye has a stronger digital starting point than a discussion of long-term-care fragmentation alone might suggest. e-Nabız, MHRS, remote patient assessment and wider national digital-health policy provide infrastructure capable of reducing distance, improving access to information and supporting new models of follow-up. The Twelfth Development Plan also establishes a clear policy direction towards wider digital-health use, interoperability, telehealth and evidence-informed planning.
The next stage is more demanding because long-term care reaches beyond health care. Functional ability, caregiver capacity, home environments, social support, community participation and personal preferences need to connect with clinical information without creating unrestricted data sharing or digital surveillance. Older people who cannot navigate online systems need equally credible routes to support, while workers need the capability and capacity to respond to the additional information that technology creates.
The strategic opportunity is therefore not to digitise every interaction. It is to use technology where it makes care more continuous, accessible, timely and person-centred. Remote services should complement physical care; monitoring should connect to defined responses; artificial intelligence should support accountable human judgement; and data should reveal unmet need as well as existing activity.
If Türkiye aligns digital investment with service design, inclusion, workforce development and governance, technology can become part of the infrastructure for a more integrated long-term-care system rather than another layer within a fragmented one.